Poetry the Focus of Upcoming ‘Writers Read’

The language and literature department at Eastern Mennonite University will hold its second “writers read author and dinner” event of the fall semester Thursday, Oct. 23.

Maggie Anderson, poet and director of the Wick Poetry Program at Kent State University in Ohio, will read from her work, including “After the Bell: Contemporary Prose about School,” 5:30 p.m. that day in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU. She will end with a question and answer period.

The Wick Poetry Center at Kent State promotes opportunities for emerging and established poets locally, regionally and nationally, provides scholarships to the university for high school and undergraduate student poets, offers outreach programs to area schools and supports publication of chapbooks by Ohio writers.

Robert Wick, a sculptor and former art department faculty member at Kent State, and his brother, Walter Wick, established the center in 1984 in memory of their sons Stan and Tom Wick.

Author of Four Books

Anderson has written four books of poetry, her most recent, “Windfall: New and Selected Poems,” published in 2000. Her other works include “Cold Comfort” (1986) and “A Space Filled with Moving” (1992).

She is editor of the new and selected poems of Louise McNeill and co-editor of “After the Bell: Contemporary Prose about School,” “Learning by Heart: Contemporary American Poetry about School” and “A Gathering of Poets,” an anthology of poems read to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the student shootings during an anti-war protest at Kent State University in 1970.

Recent poems have been published in The Alaska Quarterly, The Georgia Review and The American Poetry Review.

Admission, which includes dinner, is $15 and $7 for students. Reservations are required and should be made by Friday, Oct. 17 by calling 540-432-4168 or email: langlit@emu.edu.